1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to processing image data by encoders and more particularly to adaptively processing of the image data to improve encoder performance.
2. Description of the Related Arts
As the Internet becomes more and more popular, more and more information are being assimilated using the Internet. Today, the wide variety of information available on the Internet includes data formats ranging from simple text files to complex Java.TM. applets. Because most people access the Internet using fixed rate channels such as telephone lines, complex data intensive information such as images presents undesirable lag times associated with the downloading of the complex data.
Video sequences require even more time than still images Data compression is used to reduce the amount of data for transmission over limited bandwidth channels such as the Internet. Compressing data often leads to alteration of the original uncompressed data depending on the severity of the compression process.
Compression of video images poses particular problems which result from the enormous amount of data associated with motion images. Traditional turn key indiscriminate compressing of video images often yields undesirable effects from the compression process. Often times, such compression processes will generate excessive encoded data that increases the amount of data to be transferred. Moreover, the excessive encoded data produces little or no marginal gains in terms of improved quality to the reconstructed images. In other instances, undesirable artifacts from the compression process are also introduced to the reconstructed images.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide an apparatus and methods of operating the same which process input images to improve the encoding of the input images and produce improved reconstructed images.